Drowning
by slacktension
Summary: Naga finds Bolin after a battle with the Equalists. Borra.


**Notes:** Another prompt I got, but it seemed a bit too long to put with the others. So here it goes!

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He doesn't even have to open his eyes - he's not too sure if he could, anyway - to tell what the dull thumps and muffled shouts are. Since his eardrums popped with that last explosion, everything sounds as if his head is underwater. Once, as kids, he and Mako went swimming in the harbor, even though now he knows they used it for a _bath_, and for fun he tried to talk underwater. He and his brother would submerge at the same time, one of them would shout a word, and the other would try to figure it out.

It's an apt analogy, he thinks. His hair is plastered to his head and wet, but with blood and sweat rather than salty ocean water. His entire body is wet in most places, again with the sweat and most of his own blood, and he can't stop shaking. He wonders that if Mako were there to see him now, he would say he swam too long - he's shivering and his lips are probably purple with cold.

It's only when Naga appears, cold wet nose bumping against his arm, that he realizes he's been drifting off into the fictional waters of Yue Bay in his mind. The whines Naga emits are just audible, and they tug at his heart. He hates seeing anyone upset, especially animals. He lifts his hand blindly and his palm manages to smack against her muzzle, and because it's him Naga doesn't mind. He rubs the soft velvet above her nose and he tries to talk, but even he can tell the words spill from his mouth like childish babble. Naga seems to like it, though, because the next thing he knows, her face is digging into his side. When she flips him over onto his back, he remembers his injuries.

"Ah, Naga," he says, wincing as Naga tries to lift his body onto her head. The words don't feel as if they're coming from his mouth. "Slow down, just let me...let me rest for a bit."

He doesn't have anything else to do. He did his job, his duty, and for the first time it didn't go very well. He took the mission to dismantle spare Equalist mechatanks all on his own. No one is around to see him no save for a polar bear dog, and no one was around to save him this time. He should've known better. When he's alone, he has terrible luck.

It was supposed to be easy and simple. The war's been over for three days and now they're going through the city bit by bit, taking away Amon's fingerprints. Korra works through glowing eyes and thumbs to the forehead and breastplate, and now Bolin through bending and, he thinks regretfully, violence.

Naga is persistent. She manages to leverage her head under his body and lift him until he's resting his weight on his knees, which hurts and shoots daggers of pain up to his thighs. Bolin starts to slip off of her and return to the calm of lying on the floor, but Naga starts whining again. He hates it, hates the way he _knows_ he's making someone feel terrible on his behalf. Even if it's just Naga.

"What do you want, girl?" he mutters, more tired than concerned.

With a few jerks of her head and more muffled whines, he realizes she wants him to ride her. As much as he doesn't want to move, he can't listen to her pain anymore. He manages to shuffle across her side and pull himself up despite the break he knows he has in his forearm, and the odd grinding his right shoulder emits every time he moves it.

Her saddle manags to fit the length of his body, arms and legs dangling over the side, but it was just as comfy as the floor had been. His mind seems to shut off the second he is situated and Naga starts walking, and it feels like he is drifting out of the warehouse on a cloud. He shuts his eyes just as they trot past a pile of mechtanks, one with an equalist body spilling out of the hatch, bloody and lifeless.

He'd done his job. Now he just wants to sink to the bottom of the ocean and lie there.

When he wakes up, he's cold again. He's shivering and his body should ache, but instead he feels like he's floating. Not in a weightless sense, but again, like he's submerged in water and he's letting his body slack and drift. Arms and legs extended with a cool weight pressing in all around him, shifting with the currents and not knowing where his body ends and the water begins.

But he's breathing. The soft rustle of blankets comes from his left ear, and he's not sure if it really is blankets, or if his ears are still broken. He's not underwater even though he feels like it, and it takes a lot of courage for him to open his eyes, bracing himself for the sting of salt water but it never comes.

He does see blue.

Blue eyes a more pure shade than the slightly polluted waters of Yue Bay. Teeth popping out from behind her lips, white and blinding, like the sun reflecting off the surface of the bay. And there is salt water, he realizes, slipping from her eyes and down her face even though she's smiling, but she's always been full of contradictions, so he's not about to question it now.

"How are you?" she says, voice clear.

He smiles. "Good. How are you?"

She chokes on a forced laugh, and he's heartbroken as he watches her face twist up, leaning her elbows on his mattress to bury her face in her hands. He's never seen her cry, not really, but it's more terrible than Naga's whines because he doesn't really know what's wrong. All he wants is to slip back into the ocean and settle on the floor, because he's always been far too solid to be very good at swimming. He's tired of treading water and all he wants is to give into his nature and sink.

But he also doesn't want to leave Korra.

He wonders if the two wants are mutually exclusive, given his nature, given hers.

"You were gone for so long," she says, shoulders jerking and tears sliding down the insides of her wrists. "We - I missed you so much."

"I'm back," he says.

She lifts up her face and stares at him wide eyed.

It goes unspoken that he's there to stay. It's in his nature to not so much be rooted, but immovable, even when drowning feels more appealing than living right now.

She slowly smiles, and it's weak, but it's something. Her hand clasps over his, and suddenly he's made aware of his broken fingers, bloody and bruised knuckles, but he doesn't mind because her palm is cool and rough. She leans forward and when she goes to kiss his forehead, her hair spills from her shoulders, enclosing him in a world that exists only of _Korra_ - deep blues and browns and the smell of the ocean, cool and refreshing and dark when he needs it the most.

He shuts his eyes and keeps breathing.


End file.
